I Drove Straight Into A Tornado Warned Storm

Yesterday started out as one of those completely dead days at work.

No calls. Nothing going on. Just sitting around wondering why the hell I even got out of bed.

It had been raining on and off throughout the day, and there had been some thunder here and there. Nothing unusual. Nothing that made you stop what you were doing and think, “Well, today might be the day I get launched into another county.”

The forecast that morning mentioned the possibility of severe weather and maybe a tornado watch. But let’s be honest: How many times do we hear that?

They have to warn people when the conditions are there, even when nothing ends up happening. After hearing it over and over throughout the years, sometimes it becomes background noise. You hear “possible severe thunderstorms,” you look outside, everything seems fine, and you go on with your day.

At around 1:15 in the afternoon, I was sitting in an area behind the Walmart on Route 10. I kept hearing this thunder in the distance, but it didn’t sound like regular thunder. It sounded like bombs were dropping from the sky or buildings were exploding somewhere beyond the horizon. Boom after boom after boom.

The strangest part was that the sky around me didn’t look like there was a major thunderstorm happening. I couldn’t see any lightning. I couldn’t see some giant black wall cloud. It was cloudy, but nothing looked terrifying yet.

I remember thinking, “Whoever is underneath that storm is getting the living shit kicked out of them.” I hadn’t checked AccuWeather or any of the other weather apps since that morning. My phone hadn’t given me any major warning. Nothing told me that I needed to be worried.

Then, not long before two o’clock, my work tablet and my phone both started screaming. Not ringing. Screaming. That emergency-alert sound started blasting through the truck like the government was announcing the end of civilization. I grabbed my phone and looked at the screen.

EXTREME EMERGENCY ALERT.

TORNADO WARNING FOR YOUR AREA.

TAKE COVER NOW.

And I’m staring at the phone thinking, “Take cover now? I’m in a fucking tow truck. Where exactly would you like me to take cover?”

What am I supposed to do—pull over, find a manhole cover, pry the bastard open, and jump into the sewer? There was no basement. No storm shelter. No sturdy building right beside me. I was sitting in a giant metal box with windows, parked behind a Walmart, while my phone was basically telling me, “Good luck, asshole.”

Big capital letters. Exclamation points. The whole nine yards.

And I’m sitting there thinking, “A tornado warning? In New Jersey? Where the hell have I seen this line of shit before?” We get storms here. We get trees down. We get flooding. We get ridiculous wind. But when your phone says, “Take cover now,” that hits a little differently.

I looked back out the window toward the Walmart.

The same sky that had looked merely cloudy a few moments earlier had completely changed. Coming over the rise above the Walmart was one of the darkest gray clouds I had ever seen. I’ve seen plenty of storms in my life, but this thing looked different. Normally, when a thunderstorm moves in, you see all the individual clouds gathering together until the whole sky becomes one giant dark mass. This cloud had smaller pieces hanging around it that didn’t seem to blend in. They were just lingering there, moving along with it.

Something about it looked wrong.

I said, “Oh, shit,” and got out of there.

I drove to a safer location, used the bathroom, grabbed some cigarettes, and told the guy at the gas station what was happening. He said he thought the electricity was probably going to go out.

Meanwhile, my wife was driving home from a doctor’s appointment in Bergen County. I called her because the last thing I wanted was for her to drive blindly into whatever the hell was developing. I sent her the warning and told her to be careful. While I was talking to her, I looked toward the Walmart from about a block away.

The trees in the distance started disappearing behind what looked like fog. At first, I thought it might be smoke from the Canadian wildfires, but the wildfire smoke had already cleared out a couple of days earlier. Then I thought, “It must be raining over there.”

But that didn’t make any sense. I was less than a block away, and it wasn’t raining where I was standing. So naturally, because apparently my survival instincts temporarily stopped working, I got into the truck and drove around the block to investigate.

That was a brilliant idea. The second I came around the corner, the sky opened. The rain came down so hard that I could barely see past the hood of the tow truck. I drove into the Walmart parking lot, and visibility was so bad that I’m pretty sure I blew through half the little stop signs in the lot. Not intentionally. I couldn’t see the damn things until I was practically sitting on top of them.

Then I stopped and looked at the trees planted throughout the parking lot. At first, I hadn’t noticed any wind. Then every one of those trees bent over at the same time. I’m not talking about branches moving around. I’m talking about entire trees bending almost 90 degrees toward the ground without actually coming out of the dirt.

That was the exact moment my curiosity disappeared and pure panic took over. I hit the gas because I wanted to get to the highway and get the hell out of there. I could hear the wheels spinning, but the truck wasn’t accelerating the way it should. Now, I know hydroplaning exists. I just didn’t realize a tow truck could hydroplane that easily. I’m pressing the gas, the wheels are spinning, the rain is smashing sideways across the truck, and I can’t see behind me. For all I knew, there could have been a tornado behind the truck. I wouldn’t have seen it coming.

I finally reached the main road while I was still talking to my wife. She asked me, “Where are you going to go?”

I told her, “I don’t care. I’ll keep going down Route 10 East until the rain stops and this warning goes away.” Because at that moment, my life was not worth $22 an hour. No offense to the job, but I am not sacrificing myself and a tow truck to find out whether a funnel cloud wants roadside assistance.

My wife was having her own nightmare on Route 80. Pieces of trees and debris were flying around. The rain was so heavy she could barely see the road, and she was trying desperately to find somewhere safe to pull off. Thankfully, she managed to get off the highway safely. Then, almost as quickly as it began, the worst of the storm started to slow down. Whatever came through that area was quick but it was violent. I decided to go back to the shop.

When I arrived, everybody was standing around looking like, “What the hell are we supposed to do?” And honestly, what were they supposed to do? It’s an auto-body shop. There’s no tornado shelter. There’s no underground bunker. It’s a collection of garages filled with vehicles, tools, paint, chemicals, and plenty of other things you probably don’t want flying through the air. I made sure everybody was okay, told them what I had seen near Walmart, and waited for everything to settle.

Eventually, the smaller clouds disappeared. The rain slowed down. The sky started returning to normal. And just like that, it looked like nothing had happened. Then Facebook, TikTok, and the local news feeds started filling up with videos and pictures of the destruction. Trees were down. Roads were blocked. Power was out. People were posting videos from all over the region. Naturally, everybody online immediately started declaring that ten tornadoes had touched down. Maybe there were confirmed tornadoes. Maybe some of the damage came from straight-line winds or microbursts. A tornado warning can be issued because radar detects rotation even before anyone confirms that a tornado actually reached the ground.

That determination belongs to the National Weather Service after they examine the radar and survey the damage. A tree being down does not automatically prove a tornado occurred. But I will tell you this: Whatever hit that Walmart parking lot produced enough wind to bend every tree I could see almost to the ground. I don’t need a meteorology degree to know that I wanted no part of it.

Thankfully, my wife made it home safely. I made it through safely. Everyone at the shop appeared to be okay. Our biggest worry after that was our dog being alone at home and the dead tree in our yard that had already been struck by lightning a few weeks earlier.

That story is an entirely different shit show and we’ll save that one for another vlog. But it feels like the weather around here becomes more extreme every year. Heavier rain. Stronger wind. More flooding. More warnings. More destruction. Whether you blame changing weather patterns, climate change, bad luck, or somebody unloading an entire case of aerosol cans into the atmosphere, something certainly feels different.

So please take those emergency alerts seriously.

I know we hear warnings constantly. I know half the time nothing happens where we are. But when your phone says, “Take cover now,” don’t be the idiot who drives around the block to see what the storm looks like. I already volunteered for that position.

Stay safe, everyone. And the next time the sky starts sounding like buildings are exploding even when the clouds don’t look that bad, maybe check the weather app before the emergency alarm starts screaming.